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If your relaxing, studying, or writing periods have felt a great disturbance in the force in recent days, look no further than the saddest news for lofi beat lovers everywhere: The YouTube classic “lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to” has been taken down.
The takedown came from an automatically issued copyright strike, meaning that someone submitted a claim that the channel was playing copyrighted material. YouTube’s system is built so that when such violations are reported the video is automatically pulled down; it’s then on the video maker to prove they didn’t violate copyright.
Lofi Girl, the account behind the streams, said on Twitter that the claim was based on “false” copyright strikes, and had reached out to Youtube to remedy the situation. But both the “beats to relax/study to” and “beats to sleep/chill to” streams were both down (and, if you’re interested, listed with a runtime of about 20,000 hours each).
The lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes, hopefully @YouTubeCreators @YouTube will sort this quickly... pic.twitter.com/X01hL6jT2N
— Lofi Girl (@lofigirl) July 10, 2022
Luckily, Team Youtube responded on Twitter saying that they confirmed “the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account,” noting that it may take 24-48 hours for the videos to pop back up online. (As of 4 p.m. EST, the streams had not been restored.)
Of course, there was already a push to #BringBackLofiGirl on Twitter, which includes an artillery of memes, Reddit conjecture, and fan art (as is the internet’s wont). While we wait for the soundtrack to our lives to come back, we can at least rejoice in the internet coming together to look out for Lofi Girl and her cat in the window.
:( #BringBackLofiGirl @YouTube @YouTubeCreators pic.twitter.com/Jr0jOhZ282
— Catstyle (@Catstyle0) July 10, 2022
YouTube's shitty copyright system put the lofi continuum into a state of disbalance, light cannot exist without darkness and darkness cannot exist without light, and my headcanon is that Dark Lofi Girl and Lofi Girl are besties so #BringBackLofiGirl pic.twitter.com/ZtSX0YsimQ
— ChronoFactor (@GormentFood) July 11, 2022
she finally stopped studying for her exam hope she passes #BringBackLofiGirl pic.twitter.com/bxDperccve
— Dogg0 (@thats_ur) July 11, 2022
— Lofi Girl (@lofigirl) July 5, 2022
Lofi Girl streams are dead (for now). Long live Lofi Girl streams.